The Cubli: A Gravity-Defying Cube that Can Jump, Balance, and Walkby Christopher Jobson on December 20, 2013

Designed by a team at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, the Cubeli is a small cube capable of balancing, walking, and jumping on its own. The device contains a trio of reaction wheels that rotate extremely fast and can be controlled in speed and combination to create gravity-defying tricks shown here. The video above suggests potential uses such as planetary exploration or self-assembling robots (perhaps similar to MIT’s self-assembling M-Blocks), but I suggest we could use these for the purpose of being under my Christmas tree.